


Ahsoka and Her Men

by ilyena_sylph, Merfilly



Series: Ahsoka's Nightmare [9]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Baggage, Other, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 18:13:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7855861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyena_sylph/pseuds/ilyena_sylph, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ahsoka brings Kix home. He, of course, isn't letting the tension stay unaddressed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ahsoka and Her Men

Gregor made his way down to where Rex's quarters were, glad he could manage this much movement now. He ducked his head in, not surprised to find his friend exercising with weights. Again. If he wasn't working on their weapons and defenses, he was working out.

And rarely sleeping, Gregor knew. Maybe that would change now.

"Ship coming in, Rex." He gave a grin, meant to be teasing, part of his defenses against the way things had gone in his life. "It's your Commander's."

"What?!" Rex set the weights down with a thud, and moved to get a shirt on, not bothering with more than his blasters after that. Gregor, wisely, moved out of the way as the captain went to get out to the field she would land in.

The ship didn't look like it had seen any fights since it had last been here. Rex shaded his eyes as the vessel set down neatly, before he set off at a jog. This was no different than any other visit, he told himself. She was here, and maybe his idiocy hadn't cost him her friendship after all. He would go to the ship, meet her, let her keep her distance from his brothers.

The hatch was coming down before he reached it, and his eyes told him there was a figure there, but not the tall, robed one he expected. As he got closer, he saw an impossible sight.

That was a brother, looking much as they all had just before the War had turned into the Empire's relentless march of tyranny. And it wasn't just any trooper, either, not with that haircut, even if the man was out of uniform, wearing a shipsuit. Confusion hammered at him and he reached up to rub at his old eyes.

When he'd told Ahsoka Kix had been taken, he'd never dreamed she _could_ actually find him. 

"Are you coming aboard, sir, or are we to join you in that tin can?" Kix asked with just a touch of humor in his voice, determined to keep the note as light as he could.

"No," Rex answered, that ringing voice clear with Kix's particular intonations shaking him out of his shock, "I'll come aboard. You... _haran, vod_ , it's good to see you!" 

He moved, coming to the ramp and up onto it, still shaking his head a little. That Kix said 'we' so quickly... and then Kix was reaching out, across his body, hand clasping Rex's shoulder firmly.

"You look ancient, _vod_ , compared to where I thought you'd be looking by now," Kix said. "Looks like those long-necks kriffed us over but good, if your face is anything to go by. And the hair? I can't be losing my hair, Captain, so I'll just have to poke at this and fix it."

His eyes were sparking with the anger that seeing Rex's aging had brought, but actually making an effort to keep the words light, and that was a warning in itself that maybe the Commander wasn't at her best.

Rex snorted at him, amused even as he relaxed into the grip of Kix's strong hand. That, at least, he could match, and he grasped his _vod_ by the shoulder as well. Kix looked... well and truly angry, which actually felt strangely reassuring. "Always so polite, Kix. Yeah, I'd say as they did," he agreed, "and trust you to get in a snit over your _hair_ , of all things." 

He glanced over Kix's shoulder, then back to him to arch a brow -- those, at least, he still had -- in question and concern. 

Kix's easy-going manner tightened, and there was a half tilt of his head before he shook it marginally. "Come on; I'm not used to planetary air; it's going to make me sick," Kix suggested, just to get Rex aboard and where they might be able to fix the mess that was their commander. "As to my hair… one of us still needs to look sharp and presentable," he teased.

Rex snorted and came on aboard, reaching back to knock the ramp shut. "Can't have that, _vod_ , nobody's a worse patient than a medic! So we'll just have to keep you well, hm? 

"Presentable, with that slogan written in your hair. Mm-hmm, of course you are." 

That response, the way Kix had tensed... no, Ahsoka was still not all right. 

"Maybe I'll etch a new one in. Something about Imperial Scum," Kix offered, guiding him to the small galley that doubled as common space. Ahsoka was in there, relatively uninjured, and three cups of the spicy cocoa mix she sometimes indulged herself with instead of kaf.

"Hello, Rex," she said, with that even tone of perfect control. She picked up her mug to warm her hands, and to hide behind.

"Ahsoka," he replied, trying to keep how relieved he was to see her again behind his eyes and not boiling off his skin. He still didn't know what he should do about her continual blocking him away, didn't know if he should try again, but he knew overwhelming her would do no one any good. She'd at least used his name, not his rank, which... might be an improvement? "You -- you did it. You actually brought him home." 

"A piece of information dropped through one of my contacts' hands, and they caught me while I was between missions," she said, managing to make herself believe that, not that she had actively walked away from her suicidal mission against Vader to go find his medic for him.

"She's carted me along and made me stay in the ship for a couple of those," Kix said dryly. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say she still had a problem with getting in trouble, actually."

Ahsoka snorted, but she reached one hand out, pushing the two mugs toward the men. "Drink. Don't waste my supplies."

"She does," Rex replied, even as he reached to take the mug while it was hot. He wasn't about to waste her supplies, precious as they were. "Not that we stay out of it all that well, to tell the truth of it, _vod_." 

"Wouldn't expect you too, sir," Kix said, eyes glinting. "Personally, I feel like paying back six years worth of trouble on my own. But, seeing as I don't know who is the enemy, who is the friend… seems as if I should be back with my unit to do that."

Ahsoka kept her mouth shut, knowing just what Kix wanted, what he'd been pressing her to agree to, even though she had refused to give an answer until Kix had spoken to Rex.

Rex nodded his agreement, the anger in his brother's sharp amber eyes one he saw in the mirror most days. "Can't argue at all with that, _vod_. And there's surely plenty of it to pay back. Two or three don't make much of a unit, but it's better than going it alone." 

"See, Commander? Rex agrees," Kix said smugly, turning enough to view her as he took his cocoa to drink finally.

"No, he's agreeing with what you believe needs to happen, not what you asked of me," she retorted, eyes growing stormy.

"He agrees that we need to be a unit again, and you, sir, were part of our unit from the day you stepped off that transport on Christophsis," Kix reasoned. "I ask you again, Commander, will you take my Oath of Service?"

Rex's eyes widened, startled -- and then he wondered why in the names of the hells he hadn't thought of that tactic himself. He looked at his Commander, his friend, and saw how haunted she was. "We're stronger with you than without you, Commander. He's right." 

She put her mug down, very carefully, looking from one face to the other, these two men, one wearing almost exactly the face of her tormentors, the brother she had killed, the soldiers who had slain her entire way of life… and been lost when they did it.

"I can't." 

"Yes you can," Kix said. "Or you can at least tell us why you feel you can't, and let us both stand by you and help you come through it." He was not going to give up, not when he could see all the signs of her trauma having been shoved inside where it could only eat her alive, leading her to a path far away.

"Kix," Rex murmured, half warning and half agreement. He knew a little of what had happened to her, and some of what that had _done_ to her... but Kix was rarely wrong about a brother's need, no matter what they thought they wanted. He looked at his Commander's torn face, the pain in her eyes, and reached, slowly and carefully, to lay a hand next to hers, almost in contact. 

She stood, moving away from the table, taking space… but she didn't leave them. She just needed to be up and on her own feet, with an illusion of freedom to escape if she wanted to.

She couldn't, though, and never would be able to. 

Behind the walls in her mind the darkness beckoned, taunting her, telling her she should have come and finished her intentions instead of diverting on a foolish errand of mercy… and it chilled her to the core as she rejected the very idea of choosing a losing fight over mercy for her men.

"I killed our brother," she said softly, rejecting the black rage and anger in the back of her mind, behind those walls, for the unity of the clan, of the unit, as Kix and Rex were offering it. "The faces were blank, no more tattoos, but they didn't get rid of the scars. I knew his scar… I was there when he took the wounds.

"He may not have been himself, any longer, but I am the one that ended it for him, became convinced that I had not only failed to protect my men… but that I couldn't save them, only kill the revenants left behind from what they had become," she told them. She then looked at both men with her pain fully visible to them. "And I killed him by giving in to the anger, the rage, the pain that lives inside me because I was _his_ padawan."

Kix sat silently, not having all of the pieces, but gambling Rex knew enough to know what she needed next. He could address the guilt, in time, but he was giving way to his superior, for this.

Rex shook his head slowly, listening to her talk, hearing the agony written across her face and lekku as much as he was seeing it, and he stayed still, only putting the mug down as he looked at her. "You did what you had to do to survive, _vod_. I never understood the way _jetii_ looked at emotions, still don't. 

"You've convinced yourself you're some kind of monster for using the tools you had in order to survive... is that what you think of us, _vod_? Because I can tell you for a surety I've used rage to kill, and not just since the Empire." 

Kix interjected then, seeing something in the way Ahsoka was flinching now, moving slightly away from the willingness to speak, and reach out to them. "It's more than we're seeing, isn't it? Less the emotions… because I have seen you in a righteous fury… and something we don't understand?"

Ahsoka looked at Rex directly. "I'm no Jedi. I'm not sure from this end of things I was ever meant to be one," she said in a harsh, self-loathing voice. "And I have only ever looked up to you, to the _Vod'e_ in general! That's why the brothers were the ones used against me! To personally break me, because of how much I did care!" She wasn't shouting, but the intensity of her voice, rising in forcefulness… it reminded Kix a lot of their General once he'd been pushed past yelling. When she turned to look at Kix, there was regret mixed with the pain. "And I don't know how to explain what a training bond is, to convey that it is not something meant to be left in place when Master and Padawan part.

"All I know is he's still in my mind, and the walls I've built won't protect others forever. He knows I live, and sooner or later, I will have to face Darth Vader to be free of that poison inside me."

Rex shook his head slowly, watching her, resetting things -- was he ever going to have the faintest idea how to argue with her demons without hurting her worse before he did? -- to come at this from the different angle Kix had found. "That's no reason not to let us stay with you, Ahsoka. If you have that riding your shoulders, your mind... then being alone with it is only going to make things worse, isn't it? 

"I remember Ventress at her worst, Dooku, even Grievous. They didn't understand _burcyan_ , or _aliit_... or love, and faith. Can't imagine the Empire's monsters do, either -- but you do, Commander. You always did. Let us make that a strength again, _vod_." 

"Listen to the Captain, Commander. Pretty certain that was one piece of advice that never, ever steered you wrong." Kix waited, hoping they had lanced this wound enough to let it clear out now. Between her guilt, her trauma, and the possession (as he saw this other thing), she had cut herself off from her strengths.

Ahsoka wavered, hesitated, and slowly made her way back to her seat, covering one of Rex's hands, and one of Kix's. "I still won't take an oath of service, from either of you," she said. "But, if you can handle my fumbling at how to live again, when I am terrified I am sealing your deaths by doing this, I will ask for and give an oath of _aliit_ between us."

Rex made a soft, quietly amused noise. "I think we're all fumbling through that one, _vod_. As is sort of proven by my uncanny ability to shove an entire leg in my mouth when I'm trying to get sense through your thick skull, mm?

"A clan-bond suits me fine, if that's what you would rather have." 

"I would take that bond as well, Ahsoka Tano, and consider myself lucky for it," Kix agreed. "Of course, it raises a question, doesn't it? Are you adopting us, as eldest, or is Rex adopting you and I because he looks the oldest?"

The words were not what she had been expecting, and she laughed, startled and low and honest in its sound.

Rex snorted before reaching with the hand Ahsoka didn't have hold of to thump his _vod'ika_ in the back of the head with the heel of his hand -- but lightly. "None of the above. We're _vod'e_ , and like hell are any of the three of us standing _buir_ for the others. We'll work out the oath." 

Kix smiled; he'd gotten what he wanted by making Ahsoka laugh. She needed to do more of that, as far as he was concerned. It was one of his best memories, of a treasure that had often pulled him free of the despair that came with losing brothers. He had known, no matter how many hours she had fought, no matter how much time she'd given to the men in medical, that he could go to the barracks and find her doing her level best to console the survivors, and lead them back to laughter.

"One thing, before we go further. If you two are to be with me… and I will accept Wolffe and Gregor if they wish this… there is greater danger than just being with a Force user," Ahsoka warned, once she settled.

Rex cocked his head, wondering what else there was, what he needed to know -- but compared to having a chance to fix his mistake, a chance to stay with her, not have her disappear... he didn't care what the risk was. 

"Rex, you knew it, and asked me to block it. Kix, it might not mean much to you, but the bounty of my head as a Force User is pretty paltry compared to the one for who I am in the Rebellion," Ahsoka said. She squeezed at their hands, but focused on Rex. "I'm Fulcrum."

Just like that, the memory of knowing that came back, as well as asking her to block it… and now she was willingly sharing it with him, inviting him to share the danger equally.

"I'm going to guess that means you're mostly running things, and nothing anyone says will change my mind," Kix said, and flexed his fingers in hers. "Doesn't change my decision."

"Or mine," Rex agreed to that.

**Author's Note:**

> haran = hell, vod = brother/sibling, jetii = jedi, vod'e = brotherhood, burcyan = comradeship, aliit = clan, vod'ika = little brother, buir = parent,


End file.
